Poem fractal

Spring Salmon

by Patrick Reginald Chalmers

27 June 1872 to 12 September 1942 (~70)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“But always he had a faith in, and a devotion to, his often tyrant (I’ve said that he was the usual keeper’s dog) that neither curses could wither nor custom (the habitual kick in the ribs) stale.”

Celebrating loyalty that survives harsh treatment · Book, Gun-Dogs (1931), Curly-coated Retriever chapter

More remarks (29)

Drawing the boundary…

Read the poem Another poem

A fractal is a shape that keeps its pattern when you look closer. Coastlines, trees, shells, and weather do this. A poem can be drawn the same way.

The poem’s constant is read from the build of its lines: their length, the size of the stanzas, and the share of vowels. Poems whose constants lie closer together are built more alike. The same poem always draws the same picture. Change the length of a line, the stanza, or the vowel share, and both the number and the picture move.

Primunia is the name for the source of that order: the pattern under the pattern, already there in a tree, a shell, and a verse.

Poems nearby in the constant

A smaller distance means the lines are built more alike.

  1. Elizabeth Devereux · −1.0455 − 0.6477i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  2. Age
    William Bell Scott · −1.1026 − 0.6588i · 0.050 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Hughes Mearns · −1.0253 − 0.7420i · 0.093 away · Compare side by side
  4. Alfred Lord Tennyson · −0.9967 − 0.5681i · 0.102 away · Compare side by side
  5. Oliver Goldsmith · −0.9719 − 0.5912i · 0.102 away · Compare side by side
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